Red Bank Green

Serving Red Bank and Greater Red Bank, NJ

A former Red Bank physician who once ran an illegal prescription painkiller ring was sentenced to six years in New Jersey state prison last week.

Middletown resident Kenneth Lewandowski, 53, who Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni once called “parasitic,” was sentenced Friday to six years in prison with a two-year period of parole ineligibility under a plea deal accepted by Monmouth County Superior Court Judge Joseph W. Oxley.

New Jersey authorities have barred a Rumson print shop from producing blank prescription forms used by doctors after an investigation uncovered lax controls, state Attorney General John Hoffman announced Tuesday.

Nelson Press, based on East River Road, was found to have unwittingly provided Rx pads to a Middletown physician whose medical license was suspended, the state Division of Consumer Affairs said in a press release. The failure enabled the physician, who has since been arrested as the head of an alleged drug ring, to “obtain and write unauthorized prescriptions in another physician’s name for oxycodone and other potentially addictive painkillers,” the state alleged.